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Abstract The pressing issue of pesticide exposure disproportionately affecting marginalized communities underscores the immediate necessity to tackle pesticide drift from nearby agricultural areas, especially aggravated by the impacts of climate change. Effective measures including stricter regulations, enhanced monitoring, alternative agricultural practices, and community engagement are essential to mitigate environmental injustices and safeguard community health. This article delves into the intricate relationship between pesticide transport, groundwater vulnerability, and environmental justice within the context of climate change. Employing a geospatial analytical hierarchy overlay model, we comprehensively assess the impact of pesticide transport on groundwater vulnerability while scrutinizing climate change and associated environmental justice concerns. Groundwater vulnerability across the Kentucky River Basin varies, with 18% classified as very low, 23% as low, 27% as prone, and 20% and 12% as high and very high, respectively, concentrated mainly in the mid-eastern and southern regions due to population density and biodiversity. The research integrates a robust analytical detection technique, with a focus on glyphosate and its metabolites concentrations, to validate and refine spatial models. By engaging with communities, this study enhances understanding of environmental complexities, offering insights for sustainable environmental management. 

The Strategic Partnership for Alignment of Community Engagement in STEM (SPACES) is a collaborative research effort under the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program. The overarching goal of SPACES is to build an inclusive academic culture to address intersectional gender-race-ethnicity inequities in Environmental Engineering (EnvE) via the application of evidence-based strategies for systemic change. The two main thrusts of the project are to address systemic problems that cause: (1) underrepresented minority women faculty (URMWF) experiences of isolation in and/or departures from STEM academia and (2) the devaluation of research conducted by URMWF, especially community-engaged research (CER). SPACES is a collaborative effort of faculty and administrators from 11 universities with four leading professional societies. SPACES is adapting evidence-based practices to support women’s intersectional identities and catalyze an attitudinal change among individuals and institutional leaders. This process involves the pursuit of 12 objectives crossing the micro, meso, and macro levels and is being operationalized through 11 activities. An overview of the motivations for this project and activities to date are provided in the paper.